~~

192

The deposit may be best reached by ascending Sarita river in a small
boat at high tide for a distance of about one mile, to a point where a foot
trail from the showings reaches the shore of the river. This trail is 600
yards long and follows the east bank of the small creek above mentioned
to the base of the bluff of magnetite where the portal of the tunnel is
located. Some years ago, there was a trail leading from the shore of Barkley
sound, opposite Santa Maria island, overland to the Sarita deposit, but
this trail is now impassable. :

The country in which the deposit occurs is one of low, gentle slopes,
heavily timbered with hemlock, balsam, and spruce, the interspaces being
thickly clothed with salal, ground hemlock, and alder. A mantle of glacial
drift covers the bedrock, in some places only as a thin veneer, but in others
to a depth of several feet. Throughout the extent of the magnetite show-
ings, however, the drift does not seem to average more than 5 or 6 feet deep.

The showings (See Figure 31) extend in an intermittent, crescent-
shaped series of pits, open-cuts, trenches, and shallow shafts from the portal
of the tunnel for 1,000 feet in an easterly direction, the convex side of the
crescent facing the north. At the portal of the tunnel, which is the lowest
point on the property, the elevation is only 30 feet (barometric) above
sea-level; but this increases rapidly in a westerly direction up over the
bluff of magnetite, to a plateau-like extent of ground with elevations of
130 to 160 feet; the highest magnetite outcrop on this plateau-like surface
being 120 feet in elevation above the portal of the tunnel. The bluff of
magnetite at the tunnel mouth rises vertically for 25 feet, and then the
ground slopes up more gradually towards the west, attaining an elevation
of 130 feet above sea-level in a lateral distance of 200 feet. There is no
trail from the tunnel mouth to the other workings.

Sarita river, which drains Sarita lake, is a fine stream of water from
200 to 250 feet wide, and from 2 to 6 feet deep, with an average current
of 14 to 2 miles per hour.

HISTORY AND OWNERSHIP

These deposits were staked prior to 1900 by a prospector named Logan
who was engaged by the late William Wilson, of the firm of W. and J.
Wilson, Government street, Victoria, B.C., and Captain John Irvine,
who had been manager of the Canadian Pacific Navigation Company;
and Logan retained an interest in the claims. About 1902, it was discover-
ed that the Sarita magnetite deposits (or part of them) were on an Indian
reserve, so that a lease was taken on the property. Both the claims
and the leased ground were bonded to Homer Swaney, of Pennsylvania,
who was expending a great deal of money in an investigation of the iron
ore deposits of British Columbia, and who had recently purchased the Iron-
dale blast furnace at Irondale, Washington, from the Puget Sound Iron
Company. Swaney was drowned in a shipwreck near Victoria, and on
the settlement of his estate, the Irondale furnace passed to the Moore
Investment Company, of Seattle. Later the Moore Investment Company
became bankrupt, and the iron deposits reverted to Wilson, Irvine, and
Logan. Sometime afterwards, the lease was cancelled by the Indian
Department on default of annual payments, but the mineral claims are
owned by the Sarita and Copper Island Partnership, whose address is
in care of W. Wilson, 1221 Government street, Victoria, B.C.!

1 Memorandum from W, M. Brewer, 1925.